


Journal Entries

by Fabrisse



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:38:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fabrisse/pseuds/Fabrisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it helps to write things down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journal Entries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ide_cyan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ide_cyan/gifts).



When I was locked up, they tried to make me write a journal. The doctors, all of them, said it would help me. It's probably no different from the tapes I made for John while I drove across the desert waiting for him to be born. I liked that. The immediacy of speaking my thoughts and hopes for the life I carried.

Maybe this will work, but I know I won't write every day. I can't write every day. But on the hardest days… I think this will help me get my thoughts together.

***  
I should have known two years was too long. We're heading out, leaving Charlie behind, and John is fighting me every step of the way. I'm not the enemy. He should know the enemy. I'm just keeping us safe.

***  
The future isn't as shiny as I thought it would be. I'm relieved there aren't flying cars. They'd be too easy for Skynet to hack. I have a T-900 living with us, and I can't imagine why. I hate it, but I'm grateful to the future that's trying to protect him.

***  
John asked me when he could actually start being the hero I've trained him to be, and I had no answer. How could anyone answer it? Heroes become heroes by taking on tasks no one should ever have to, taking risks that I can’t allow him to take.

I know he'll be that man. I saw it in his father's eyes before he was even born, and I know at fifteen he's so close to being a man. 

Too close. Cameron. I don't know why adult John chose her for this assignment. I worry that it's because they're lovers in the future. John's safety came first, and that meant few friends for either of us, but I forget, sometimes, that I have had friends and roommates and a family, and John hasn't.

So has the life he's led until now kept him from connecting to the humanity we're trying to save? And does that mean his most meaningful relationships have been, are, will be with machines? It worries me, how proficient he is at programming. He seems natural building a computer from parts or sitting at a keyboard typing out long strings of code. I'm probably the only mother in the world who _wishes_ her son was using the internet to access porn. At least they'd be humans, those women offering to talk to him for only a dollar a minute.

***  
Every once in awhile, I contemplate what my rap sheet would look like if every crime I've committed were written down. Sometimes, I revel in every theft that let me keep my son safe, every round of ammunition I've chambered to take down another machine trying to destroy my son.

I don't worry about the crimes people think I committed. I know the truth. But tonight, I've crossed a line, at least in my own head. I destroyed a man's life's work by burning his house down. Arson's big. Worse, I know Cameron, a machine, is judging me for destroying his work but leaving him alive. Worst of all, I genuinely like Andy Goode. I wish I could have introduced him to John. I bet Andy would have seen a fellow hacker and they could have talked about all the stuff that's going to create Skynet's future.

John would have loved having someone to talk to like that.

***  
I didn't know Kyle had a brother. He's living with us, too. He hates Cameron, likes John, and trusts no one. I can't blame him. I don't really trust myself.

I also know that I'll keep him safe, in spite of the fact that he killed Andy Goode.

***  
Derek assumes I killed a man, that it's the first time John's seen a man killed. God, how I wish it were. For his sixteenth birthday, my son killed a man with his bare hands to save my life and then saved a machine who wanted to kill him. Then he cut his hair. I might have thought he looked like he was growing up before, but now he's a grown man. 

It's not something a mother's supposed to think about. Or maybe it is -- I never was much for those mom support groups. I'm as close to positive as I can be that John's still a virgin. And he's too young for sex -- although I remember losing my virginity at sixteen -- but what does it say about our lives, the life I've prepared him for, that he's choked the life out of a man before he's fallen in love or lost himself in the wonder of someone else's body.

***  
And now there's an annoying girl. 

That's not fair. What makes her annoying is the fact that she's not safe with us, and John's not safe around her. He lets his guard down, lowers his defenses to let her within them. It puts the whole family at risk. 

He's a brat. I love him, but he's not thinking clearly.

***  
MEXICO!

***  
It's been months since I picked this up. Three dots. I know they mean something. I see them. I follow them. And John looks at me like I’m crazy. Derek may put me down, if he thinks I’m a threat to John. At least it would be quick.

Maybe that’s what all this is. Cameron told me that I died of cancer before this little time jump. Maybe I can feel that something’s wrong because I’m not supposed to be here. Of course, John’s also supposed to be 23. Would he have been able to get into college? He’s smart, scary smart, but all of the moving, all of the pain and death and disconnection.

I wake up every morning and wonder if I should have married Charlie. Did I start us on this path, keep John from being able to connect with humans? I wonder if he’d be a better man, the _right_ man for saving the future if I’d found a way to let us stay. Charlie filed the missing persons report that brought Agent Ellison back into our lives, that let the “metal,” as Derek calls them, find us. Did I bring all this down on my son?

***  
His girlfriend is dead. Murdered. He didn’t get the sweetness of young love. Derek’s killed someone again, and he’s lying about it.

The Turk played chess, but Cameron says the machines are playing Go -- and “strange things happen at the one-two point.”

***  
Ellison is no longer with the FBI. I knew that, but he says a machine has begun to develop a moral center. And then he says he’s working for Catherine Weaver and he’s here to negotiate getting her daughter back. 

I know that thing killed Savannah’s parents, but, face to face, on some level, she’s a mother -- at least as much as I’ve been.


End file.
